Progress on the offices is non-existent, but the other stuff is getting done.

Tomorrow? Tomorrow I have no agenda that I know of. Starting the office clean up is a good idea! I do have some things to get to the post office as well. Thursday I have 2 appointments . . . Friday I have one.

I have 2 appointments: tax person & a doctor’s appt. I also need to go work out, at least twice. I’ve been sitting in front of a computer too much and eating too much. Despite long jaunts in the garden and many trips up/down the stairs, I’m gaining weight.

I have to go to the market & banks. I have things to mail. I have the box lot to deliver.

In the middle of all of the cataloging, I got the surface of the new graphics table sorted out. It’s not cleared, but there’s a lot less misc. “stuff” on it. I’ve started to unpack the boxes in the living room. And I hit a major snag.

Before I can remove the boxes of stuff from the living room, I have to get both offices picked up. The line of boxes in the living room that are next on the “tackle” list are things that were removed from both offices: books, files, equipment, art work, etc. All of which needs to be sorted and stored, if it’s going away and it’s worth $, it needs to be appraised, cataloged, tagged and taken to the booth, or trashed/donated out of here.

This is the same process as the books go through, but the sort and appraisal is not as clear cut. The only really clear cut part of this is that no matter what, the offices have to be cleaned up, so we can figure a SPACE BUDGET for them and then decide what stuff stays or goes. Cleaning each office will likely take me 2 days — and I have other things on the agenda this week. So, if I’m lucky? Next Monday I’ll have the offices cleaned!

I’ve cataloged onlly 74 books today, and I’m just feeling brain dead/tired. I have nearly all (minus about 14) books for one of the box lots ready to go. That will be nice, when it goes (Sunday? I hope!) it will free up 1.13 cubic feet of my life, and approx 77 books will be gone, forever.

YEAH!

But in the meantime, tonight? Tonight I’m tired of cataloging, tired of handling books, tired of the mess, tired of the endless memory lane that goes with handling the old store stock: an endless youtube in my head of customers, shows, authors, sales, collectors, etc.

Someone bought 3 books and a flower frog. Four more things gone!

Tomorrow? Tomorrow I’m going to finish up this box lot and perhaps deliver it. Then check to make sure I have all the groceries I need. Then I think I’ll get DH to help me finally get the white book case out of here.

I have plans for Monday, a need to make a cake for a birthday later this week. Monday’s the easiest day for me to do this.

I’m tired!

Books, etc. processed since 6/15/12 = 463 which works out to about 58 a day. That’s about what I expected with the 100 every other day goal. I’ve skewed that today, but wanted to get the box lot done. Ah well — there’s always tomorrow!

and other stuff, there’s just about exactly another 100 pieces out today too. I pulled hardcovers/large format paperbacks out, most of those are being donated. The small, rack-size paperback science fiction/fantasy/horror are being wholesaled. The other small paperbacks will be taken to the dump’s swap shop or donated elsewhere, tomorrow or Sunday, I hope. Monday at the latest.Having gotten to the point where I’ve “given up” trying to sell the things, then my job is to get them OUT OF HERE with as little handling on my part as possible.

Don’t expect this level of effort is going to last much longer! The spinner is STUFFED, the shelves are pretty full. Until we get the white bookcase into the booth, I have nowhere else to put any more books in the booth.

Nicely, as I was leaving this afternoon, there was a woman there looking at the spinner, two books in her hand. GRIN! [I hope she found a dozen more!]

catalog just under 300 books (289). I have the 100 I finished yesterday ready to go to the antique booth today. The white book case in DH’s office, which is going to the booth is nearly empty. The new graphics table and the space near it is much neater and holds less stuff. Yesterday I sold 5 books, donated 4, and put 3 in the dump bin, etc. I’ve also mowed and started the next wholesale box. I have a box of 50+ to catalog today before I go to the booth; I’m planning to sell them as a box lot.

In other words, I have been BUSY. However, next week is the end of June, 1/2 way through the year. I have only about 50 things to add to the last tally, and I should be at around 5015, instead of the 3672 where I was as of my last update. I have added one new category of stuff going “out” that isn’t, well, it is. I’m giving myself 1 point for every 100 pieces I catalog. This is like a REVEAL in that I want to reward myself for the work I’m doing as I’m doing it, not just the stuff going out.

I need to give up on the desk that’s currently in the booth. I haven’t hauled it out of there because I haven’t been sure how to dispose of it. It’s DH’s, and he’s not entirely sure what he wants to do with it, either. If someone bought it, that would be great, but it has been there for a couple of months now, and no takers.

was catalog 105 books, some weeding, 2 loads of dishes, 1 load of laundry, and that’s it. I didn’t get the area in front of the bookcase cleared at all. But I did do the 100 books.

T0morrow I have an appt. with the tax person in the a.m., so that’s what is happening then, and earlier will be gathering up the data she needs. After that? we’ll see!

J

P.S. I’ve been wondering, since yesterday’s post . . . I wonder if adding plants in the house would help me feel like I’m nurturing something there? I usually manage to kill house plants (embarrassing:: yes).

If I work on the de-hoarding the house/cleaning stuff I have no time to work on the writing/editing the books in process.

If I work on the writing, the house work doesn’t get clean.

If I catalog the books, etc. that de-hoard the house, the cleaning doesn’t get done.

If I work on the garden, nothing gets done IN the house.

And if I do any/all of this, I don’t write blogs!

I keep running into the same limitations: my physical limits, time, resources, bad habits, and emotional crap. I hate problems where you don’t know what you don’t know, so you can’t solve them, but this is almost as bad. I know what I need to do, just that there’s so f’n MUCH of it that no matter what I do, for however long, it means that something else doesn’t get done. I need to drag the cards out, again and just let myself clean for 2-3 hours a day, add 1 hour for gardening (or 2) and then spend the rest of the day on the computer, writing/editing books/blogs, and cataloging books/stuff to go away the rest of the time.

Part of the appeal of the gardening is that I can see the results of my work: seeds sprout, garden beds are weeded, the lawn mowed, the wood pile straightened up, etc. It’s tangible. The house stuff is so overwhelming that no matter what I do, you can’t tell, mostly because it causes a huge mess somewhere else. DH is going to a city with a thrift shop tomorrow. I should give him a BIG bag o’ stuff to take with him. Not likely to happen as it’s 1 am and I haven’t been to sleep yet, and he’ll leave early. (See limitation #1 above.)

The cleaned up areas in the house don’t affect me the same way the garden does. That is, seeing someplace clean in the house doesn’t make me as happy as a cleaned up area in the garden. Partly because the cleaned up areas in the house don’t grow anything and partly just because they’re static when they’re clean — a stage setting for whatever — static. Nothing grows, next to nothing changes, and when you use it, it’s messed up again. Tending the garden makes me happy — hoeing weeds, picking stones, planting things, because I’m nurturing growing things, plants.

And I guess then that it’s totally obvious that in my house I’m not nurturing anything. What a damning testament! I’d feel guilty if it was something I chose to do, but it’s just the way I’ve always viewed my living space. It’s a storage facility.

I need a baby step in a new direction.

I’m working on the garden in sort of three-fold plan…this year I’m planning on doing at least 2 crops. For example, I bought pea plants and planted pea seed and fava beans at the same time. The plants I bought will come out, the 2nd peas (from seed) will be yielding, and the favas will fill in the space where the 1st peas were. But in the next few years, I’m thinking about a garden business thing. I don’t know if that will work or not yet, but I’m considering it.

So, I’m working on making what I grow more productive and possibly a business. I’m nurturing more plants in the garden, to nurture us more, both nutritionally and financially.

A large part of the stuff in the house is the remainder of a failed business, my book shop. A lot of it, cataloging and selling things for mostly less than I paid for them, over and over again, I just find depressing — it’s a continual reminder that I failed, expensively, and it’s still costing us money. And the job is also repeteteve and boring.

The last time I got really excited about the house/cleaning the house was when we did the great office/living room move in October last year and the next 2 months of moving things around in my office so I could use it. There’s less stuff in DH’s office, but mine is now completely filled. You can’t walk to my counter, you have to walk over piles of stuff to get there.

The next step is to get the prototype bookcase from the laundry room into the living room, the white bookcase out of DH’s office, the teak bookcase that’s waiting in the hallway into DH’s office (replacing the white one). None of those are easy. If we get the prototype bookcase into the living room, then we can do what it was made for, that is, see if the concept will work. If it does? DH buys decent plywood and makes bookcases, which I fill. (Which will unclog my office & the attic some.)

I can clean up the area in front of the white bookcase tomorrow (today) and get DH to buy some more book boxes to store the books in the case tomorrow. If I empty it, then I can haul it to the antique store to sell. Or just use it there. This job will probably take me my entire cleaning allotment (2-3 hours above), but it maybe, just maybe will break the log jam!

J

P.S. I also have an appt Tues. with the tax person, so no matter what I have to work on the taxes tomorrow/today too!